For decades, standard ad campaigns have used demographic information—primarily zip code, gender and income,—in order to create advertisements directed to groups of people. An advantage of using this demographic information has been that certain feedback statistics, though imprecise, can be obtained in order to determine if the content of the ad is properly targeting the intended group of recipients. A problem, however, still exists in that such feedback statistics are very imprecise and also not timely obtained, analyzed and able to be used to make decisions.
Reports on the manner in which certain groups respond to an ad campaign also exist, but such reports tend to rely on assumptions relating to behavior, rather than identifiable statistics.
With the proliferation of the Internet and interactive television, advertisements have continued to play a significant role, with the added aspect of monitoring behavior in order to determine which ad to use—such keying ads to keywords, and having paid advertisements associated with such ads. But while technology continues to evolve, the manner in which advertisements are created and used has remained quite conventional. Thus, while banner ads exist that can relate to the subject matter of a web-page, and interactive television ads are played on a part of the screen relating to product that is part of a television broadcast, such advertisements are essentially flat or static, in that the same advertisement is used for each of the different viewers.
There are instances in which advertisements have been directed to the location of a person, such that a local restaurant ad is displayed based upon the user's location. In such advertisements, however, the advertisement is still “flat” and remains the same.
What is needed, therefore, are methods and systems in which an advertisement is personalized, and created taking into account different levels of user information. Furthermore, it would be advantageous for such methods and systems to have uses that are beyond the realm of traditional advertising, and can be used to implement a variety of functionalities.